The article Depressed? Marriage May Help, Study Says describes how getting married can lessen depression to a degree. Not by a lot, and hey, they're not completely sure what's up with the depression exactly, but dammit, it lessens it when you're married! If you don't get married YOU WILL DIE ALONE AND EARLY.

Never mind the fact that they didn't take into account people in cohabitating relationships that never marry. Or, the biggie here, that a lot of women become less happy when they get hitched. As I've said before, marriage increases men's happiness*. And hey, it may very well decrease their depression. But it's annoying to see that they didn't even take gender into account here. I would've been very interested to see what the results would've been if they had.

It's particularly annoying today, as I also ready this article: Stressed Out? Grab Hubby's Hand. Oh sure, they say "Hubby" in the title, but this article is all about how women lessen their stress by holding hands with someone. Anyone. Some smelly guy on the street? Yup, his hand will do the trick, just not as potently as a S.O.

They never once mention men's stress levels to said holding-hands. They bring up that as children, we hold hands with people and it gives us warm and fuzzies as a psychological reason... but gee, doesn't that go for BOTH genders? But then again, women are the emotional ones, right? Men don't receive emotional responses because they have a penis. Riiiiight.

I just love how gender is manipulated in both cases.

* No, I'm not saying that all married women are hating life. Women can be happy in marriage. Marriage can be hugs and puppies! All I'm saying is, statistics show an increase in happiness with men when they get married and a decrease in happiness for women when they get married. Not everyone fits into a statistic.

Of course men are happier when married. Men invented marriage. Men passed laws to make it damn near impossible for women to survive without marrying someone. If you work that hard on something and then it doesn't make you happy, you are too stupid to live. ;)

Other stats have shown that women tend to be LESS happy in marriage, and that lesbians tend to have more mental stability than any other form of couple. Of course, those don't seem to be mentioned here.

*Nod* Exactly. It seems that quite a few studies these days only work with the statistics that work for them and what they deem important. Nevermind that it throws their whole findings completely off so that they can't be trusted or even looked at seriously.

That's why I just don't really trust them. I know they CAN be trustworthy and I'm sure some are, but how do I know which ones? Unless they really, really explain where they're getting their data and how they sifted it.

I think one of the most helpful things I learned from my sociology classes was how to look at a study (and charts) and figure out what they're really saying and what they're not.

There's a lot of really helpful studies out there that can bring a lot of insight to the table... unfortunately, there's a lot more studies that bring nothing but confusion and frustration to the same table.

I make an effort to figure out what a study's really saying, but the problem is that I usually hear about them through news articles, and the press makes NO attempt to clarify because they have a slant and that's what they're using the study to support. They often don't give enough info for me to locate the original study, so I end up not being able to pay much attention to the whole thing.